The appointment of Laurent Pietraszewski as Secretary of State for Pensions, last December, had brought a breath of fresh air to an executive power then wracked by weeks of blockage against the reform. His fine knowledge of the file, his professional career spent for years in the human resources of the Auchan group, as well as his ability to respond to the blows of the opposition in the hemicycle, had made him the ideal candidate for the job.
Spent in less time than it takes shade to light, thanks to the resignation in catastrophe of Jean-Paul Delevoye, he had almost become the new darling of the government. And then ... patatras. Coronavirus crisis requires, Emmanuel Macron sounded the death knell for his ambitions on the evening of March 16, announcing in a televised speech the suspension of all reforms ... "starting with pension reform".
Since then, almost nothing. His political and media agenda has emptied. Radio silence. In his office on avenue Duquesne in Paris (7th district), the Secretary of State is witnessing the health and economic damage caused by the epidemic, and masks his probable disappointment at not having been able to carry this pivotal text to the end, qualified within Macronie as the mother of the five-year reforms.
With the crisis, Edouard Philippe entrusts it with a new mission
“I was not surprised at the decision of the President of the Republic. It was coherent and necessary in view of the situation we were living in, ”he says, a good soldier. His reform at a standstill, that which is called "Pietra" in the ministerial corridors, did he still sit idly by? "I'm not bored, no, no. I am not unemployed, "corrects the person concerned, claiming to have" sought immediately to be useful ".
Barely 48 hours after Macron's announcement, Edouard Philippe entrusted him with a mission: to take charge with Muriel Pénicaud of protecting the health of employees against the epidemic of Covid-19. “It was decided very quickly the day after tomorrow. Occupational health is an area that I know very well ”, he explains to explain this attribution spent under radar. So much so that it was only made official this Wednesday by a decree published in the "Official Journal". “He has an important place in our team. If he was chosen to enter government, it is not for nothing. Whatever his assigned task, we know he is working, ”says Matignon.
In recent weeks, Pietraszewski has therefore taken on the responsibility of supervising health protocols for businesses, in perpetual consultation with the social partners and employers' organizations at the rate of two meetings per week. "We had to be in a position to reassure and protect all those who are daily in the workplace, to find solutions for cashier hostesses, employees in food distribution, but also those in the building industry," explains the manager who heads a task -force to the Ministry of Labor, in connection with the health crisis unit, to write the risk prevention advice guides by trades. Sixty in all.
Buried, the pension reform?
And what about pension reform? Some, within the majority, already suggest that she would be definitively buried, at least for the next two years. An open secret. "I am not sure that we will be able to carry it out by the end of the quinquennium," even the boss of En Marche, Stanislas Guérini, said last week in "La Voix du Nord".
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Laurent Pietraszewski does not necessarily resolve it. "She's suspended. The President has said it in these terms. I understand that the question is being asked. But there is nothing else I can answer, ”he eludes, while refusing to talk about this reform in the past. “It is not useful to restart the machine for the moment because the context does not lend itself to it. But we must continue to wear it. The universality of social protection must remain a struggle, "said MEP Roland Lescure, who defended the text alongside him. It remains to be seen when.
